A Unified Communications (UC) solution allows users to sign on to UC servers from anywhere in the world and continue to make and receive audio calls to and from Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Each user is also assigned a unique telephone number and all calls to that telephone number are routed to the user's client endpoint(s). A UC deployment has one or more servers where clients register and infrastructure to talk to PSTN via one or more media gateways (IP-PBX, PSTN Gateway or SIP Trunks).
Each user is also assigned policies that control call authorization, such as which telephone numbers the user is allowed to call, and call routing rules, such as which media gateway routes the call to PSTN when the call is authorized. This policy assignment is based solely on user identity and does not depend on the physical location of the user. For example, a user who is assigned a Redmond telephone number and homed on a server in Tukwila may sign in from a hotel in New Delhi, India. In such cases, the same policies are applied and the call will be routed as if the user is signed in from Redmond.
The administrator of the UC system may want to enforce different authorization policies and routing rules based on the physical location of the client. There are multiple reasons why the administrator may want to enforce different authorization policies and routing rules based on the physical location of the client. For example, legal compliance regulations in some countries govern which legs of a call between two parties can traverse via VoIP (Voice over IP) and which legs have to be routed over PSTN. These rules vary from country to country and are even harder to enforce in UC world. In addition, there may be reasons that are based on WAN bandwidth management. For example, the audio data between the client endpoint and the media gateway flows over the company network. The administrator may choose to route the call over a media gateway that is closer to the physical location of the endpoint so that the call consumes less WAN bandwidth.
Currently, there are no solutions for meeting the vast complexity of legal compliance regulations based on the physical location of the user. Regarding bandwidth management, call admission control is a well-known feature for providing bandwidth management. For a call between two media endpoints, e.g., clients and a media gateway, both endpoints check with a policy server to see if bandwidth is available. However, for inbound calls from PSTN, if bandwidth is not available between the client endpoint and the media gateway on which the PSTN call landed, the call is rejected. For outbound calls, if bandwidth is not available, then an alternate route based on the policy assigned to the user is tried if one is available. Here again, the alternate routes are assigned to the user and is not based on the location. Thus, these solutions will not work in all cases.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system, method and device for call policy enforcement and routing based on user location.